The "Middle East and Terrorism" Blog was created in order to supply information about the implication of Arab countries and Iran in terrorism all over the world. Most of the articles in the blog are the result of objective scientific research or articles written by senior journalists.

From the Ethics of the Fathers: "He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it."

Wednesday, July 27, 2016

The Iranian regime, which so far has been spared the
regional repercussions of the Arab Spring – or Islamic Awakening as the
regime calls it – is now starting to feel the effects.

Institute for Contemporary Affairs

Founded jointly with the Wechsler Family Foundation

Vol. 16, No. 12

Iran’s Ethnic Diversity (U.S. Institute of Peace)

Since June 2016, Iran has been enduring terror attacks
and assassinations by ethnic-opposition elements operating within its
territory and adjacent to it.

Attacks on Iranian petroleum infrastructure in Ahvaz are a reaction
to Iran’s ongoing repressive policy against the Arab minority in Ahvaz,
including the ongoing arrests, trials, executions, and expulsions of
young people in that area.

There are currently six to seven million Kurds living in Iran.
Although they are part of the Iranian state, they may be distinguished
from the Shiite minority by language and religion (most Kurds are
Sunnis).

The Arab Sunni fighters’ targeting of the oil facilities, if it
gains momentum, could pose a problem for Iran just as it is trying to
renew oil exports after the lifting of sanctions. Attacks on energy
infrastructure for gas and oil could foster an unsafe, unstable
environment for international energy companies.

Iran’s security forces have been cracking down on the Arabs,
augmenting this population’s discontent along with its separatist
aspirations.

The Iranian regime, which so far has been spared the
regional repercussions of the Arab Spring – or Islamic Awakening as the
regime calls it – is now starting to feel the effects.

Since June 2016 and to a lesser extent before then as well, Iran has
been enduring terror attacks and assassinations by ethnic-opposition
elements operating within its territory and adjacent to it. These
include Kurds in the north and near the Iraqi border, Salafi Sunnis near
Iran’s eastern border with Pakistan, and Sunni Arabs in the Khuzestan
province near the Iraqi border in the southwest.

The Growing Arab Opposition

Early in June, a Sunni group called Suqour al-Ahvaz (Hawks
of Ahvaz) took responsibility for an explosion that caused a fire at the
Bou-Ali-Sina Petrochemical Complex in Bandar-E Mahshahr, Khuzestan.1, 2 Iran denied their boast and claimed it was a leak that had led to the explosion.3 The complex where the explosion occurred is known for protest demonstrations over the difficult employment conditions there.

The group also issued a statement calling for continued resistance to
the Iranian occupation of Arab lands, which had “crossed a red line.”
The statement also said the explosion was a reaction to Iran’s
repressive policy against the Arab minority in Ahvaz, including ongoing
arrests, trials, executions, and expulsions of young people in the area,
and warned of further attacks on vital infrastructures and strategic
facilities in Iran. The group’s spokesman said this was a new tactic
aimed at damaging the Iranian economy, which thrives at the expense of
the people of Ahvaz who live under the poverty threshold.

Furthermore, in an appeal to a target audience in Arab countries that
is fearful of Iran, the group emphasized that it condemned Iran’s
involvement in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia and averred
that it also intended to take action in the “Iranian interior” and to
continue the “legitimate struggle until the Arab people of Ahvaz receive
their full rights to their land.”4

On July 11, the group said it had attacked another oil facility in the area.5
It was the gas and liquid gas pipeline of the Marun Oil and Gas
Exploitation Company at the Marun oil field in Khuzestan. One worker was
killed and another wounded.6 Subsequently, a state of emergency was reported in Ahvaz.7

On July 17, 2016, the al-Farouq Battalion of Arab Struggle Movement
for the Liberation of Ahvaz (ASMLA) targeted oil pipelines in the Johar
as-Sabaa’ (Haftkel) district (75km northeast of Ahvaz). According to the
group’s statement, the perpetrators managed to escape despite IRGC
efforts to capture them. ASMLA reported that IRGC set up a security
cordon around the area.8

A commander in the al-Faruq Battalions said that that the operation
came in response to the ongoing transgressions of the Persian occupation
state against the Arab people of Ahvaz and the spreading sectarian
strife and immoral intervention in the affairs of neighboring countries
including Saudi Arabia. He threatened further attacks, adding that the
al-Faruq Battalions performed a careful study of the strategic target
points on the oil pipelines stretching from the Johar as-Sabaa’ area to
the inside of Iran, and they had managed to infiltrate the security
cordon on this important economic region and successfully carry out this
special attack.9

Social media reacted to the attacks with the hashtag #TheAhvazisshakeIran trending on Twitter and praising the resistance. The Elaph
newspaper claims that the ASMLA recently warned that they will begin
targeting foreign oil companies that work with Iran, and that invest in
the oil of the Ahvaz region.10

In March, ASMALA called on all international oil companies not to
legitimize and collaborate with the “Iranian regime’s oppression of the
Ahwazi people by rushing to invest in the Iranian oil sector following
the lifting of international sanctions.” ASMLA stressed that “the
profits attained by the Iranian regime from the sale of the oil and gas
resources in Ahwaz are used both in the brutal oppression of the Ahwazi
people, who are denied any share in or profit from their own resources,
and in funding terrorist entities which actively work to destabilize
security and stability in the Arab world and elsewhere.11”

Over three million Arabs live in oil-rich Khuzestan. Unemployment has
risen and air pollution is measured at very high levels. If the attack
was indeed perpetrated by this group, then the Arab opposition has dealt
a very hard blow to Iran’s oil and gas industry.

In mid-June, another Sunni opposition group, the Arab Struggle
Movement for the Liberation of Ahvaz (ASMLA), announced that it had
attacked an oil pipeline in the Zarqan area of Khuzestan. The group
claimed it had also carried out additional, similar attacks. Its
military wing, the Martyr Mohye al-Din al-Nasir Battalions, posted a
short video showing the pipeline that was blown up and asserted that the
attack was a reaction to Iranian security forces’ activities in the
area.

The statement issued by the group read:

In conjunction with the 11th anniversary of the founding of ASMLA,
the Martyr Razi al-Zarqani Battalion conducted a special operation
targeting oil pipelines in the Zarqan area of the provincial capital
[that] crippled the flow of oil from Ahvaz toward Tehran [dubbed “the
capital of the occupation”]. [T]he targeting of the main oil pipelines
came in response to the arbitrary Persian occupation arrests against
Ahvazi activists as well as its continuing crimes against the rights of
the Arab Ahvazi people and its profaning of the Arab nation. The Martyr
Mohye al-Din al-Nasir Battalions will continue its special operations
against the centers of the occupation state and its oil installations
until the liberation of the last inch of Ahvazi soil.

The Iranian media gave the event almost zero coverage, and Iranian
security forces imposed a closure on the area where it had occurred.

Global Jihad

In
eastern Iran near the Pakistani border, groups affiliated with global
jihad continue to act against the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps
(IRGC) and Border Guard Command forces stationed in the area, sometimes
hitting them hard. In June the global-jihad group Jaish al-Adl attacked
Iranian forces operating in the Sistan and Balochistan Province. Ansar
al-Furqan, a jihadi organization active in the Balochistan area, claimed
it had killed dozens of Iranian soldiers in a suicide bombing13 in the city of Khash.14
Near the Pakistani border in Sistan and Balochistan, five members of
the Border Guard Command were killed in a clash with armed Sunni
elements who fled back into Pakistan.15

The Iranian Kurds

Along with the intensified activity of the separatist forces in
Khuzestan and the jihadi groups along the Pakistani and Afghani borders,
June also saw stepped-up activity by the Kurdish opposition in Iran. In
June, the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI) attacked IRGC
patrols along the Iran-Iraq border in the area of Oshnavieh and
Sarvabad, cities that neighbor the Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq.
Several IRGC members and Kurdish fighters were killed in the clashes.16
In another incident in June some fighters of another Kurdish group,
PartiyaJiyana Azad a Kurdistanê (PJAK), were killed. The PJAK has links
with the Turkish PKK near the city of Sardasht along the Iraqi border.

Currently, six to seven million Kurds live in Iran. Although they are
part of the Iranian state, they are distinct from the Shiite minority
in several major regards, including language and religion (most Kurds
are Sunnis). The Kurds, who are mainly concentrated along the Iraqi
border, are poor compared to Iranians who live in the large cities. At
the end of May 2016, President Hassan Rouhani visited some Kurdish areas
and promised that centers for the study of the Kurdish language would
be established and that Kurdish-populated parts of northwestern Iran
would be developed after years of neglect:17 According to Rouhani,

The Islamic Republic of Iran heed [sic] the problems of its diverse
people; our security now is far more than the territories located beyond
the borders but having the same ethnic population; Kurds enjoy better
situation [sic] in terms of security than their counterparts in Iraq,
Turkey, and Syria; it is an honor for the Islamic Republic not to
succumb to religion and ethnicity in providing its people with the same
level of development and welfare.

The KDPI has long striven for independence in the Kurdish regions of
northern Iran. The increased activity stems from growing awareness of
possible Kurdish independence in Syria along the Turkish border, and of
the freedom and relative independence enjoyed by Kurds in northern Iraq.
The group’s military arm, which numbers thousands of fighters, is based
in northern Iraq but has not been absorbed by the Kurdish population
there. The KDPI is trying to pursue an independent agenda but appears to
be caught between conflicting interests; to some extent, the Kurdish
groups in the four main countries with sizable Kurdish populations
(Syria, Turkey, Iraq, and Iran) are waging struggles against each other.

Iran’s Ethnic Diversity (U.S. Institute of Peace)

For example, the Kurds in northern Iraq’s Kurdish enclave are trying
to maintain open channels for oil exportation both to Turkey and Iran
and certainly, do not want to open a front with Iran despite the KDPI’s
growing military activity. Likewise, the Kurds in northern Iraq are
maintaining a careful policy of nonintervention in Turkey’s difficult
and bloody struggle against the PKK, which sometimes includes Turkish
bombing of Kurdish targets in northern Iraq. Iran, too, in the wake of
clashes with the KDPI, has threatened that the IRGC will not hesitate to
act against “terrorists” in their main strongholds in northern Iraq if
they do not cease their activity, saying that “they will be targeted
wherever they are.”18

In sum, last month Iran had to deal with subversive activity– though
so far of low intensity – by a number of ethnic elements on all its
borders in the northwest, the southwest, and the east of the country.
The Arabs (in Khuzestan) and the Kurds are trying to pursue a separatist
national agenda, and they are inspired by the geostrategic changes in
the Middle East and the efforts to reshape it.

The Arab Sunni fighters’ targeting of the oil facilities, if it gains
momentum, could pose a problem for Iran just as it is trying to renew
its oil exports after the lifting of sanctions. Attacks on energy
infrastructure for gas and oil could foster an unsafe, unstable
environment for international energy companies. Such companies are in
any case concerned about Iran’s intention to renew contracts using the
buyback system, which is more beneficial for a state than for foreign
companies. Iran has been reporting little on the attacks on its energy
infrastructure, which have mainly been occurring in the Khuzestan
province. Meanwhile, Iran’s security forces have been cracking down on
the Arab minority there augmenting this population’s discontent along
with its separatist aspirations.

It may be early to envision the mounting ethnic-religious protest in
Iran causing a substantial change in the regime’s behavior. It is,
however, clear that the Iranian regime, which so far has been spared the
regional repercussions of the Arab Spring – or Islamic Awakening as the
regime calls it – is now starting to feel its effects.